Yes, this is just outright incorrect

It’s perfectly reasonable to apply appropriate skepticism to any claim, based on assessment of past history etc. But that only gets you as far as a hypothesis, not a conclusion.

No problem! I really dislike seeing people get anxious and stressed over these kind of tech chain letters. As you say, there are plenty of genuine things to discuss and work through, and this kind of unhelpful claim makes that harder by taking up all the oxygen in the room

They do claim not to use emails for ads: support.google.com/mail/answer/.... I believe they *used to* though - this changed 2017ish?

I mean, anything’s possible. If Google say no then it’s it’s always possible they’re lying. But assuming that without direct evidence does mean one risks falling for any old nonsense claim

If they actually do, when they say they don’t, then they can and should get lawsuit-ed out of existence. But there are subtle biases that can make it seem like this is happening when it isn’t. See the ‘my phone is listening to everything’ conspiracy theory that causes people needless anxiety.

The claim of the malwarebytes post is incorrect. If you have other supposition then that can be argued and substantiated too - but it’s not a reason to say that false statements are ok.

Google are very firmly denying this: www.theverge.com/news/826902/...

If you spend a lot of time thinking about class, you’re probably middle-class.

(The inverse is not true)

It is genuinely nice that someone has turned those misanthropically unpleasant books into a source of joy for millions

Wikimedia, I meant